Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(78)

“If your Master hates Canopy so much,” Unar spluttered, “why take my sister in? Why protect her, when she has no patron deity whose powers you might use?”

Kirrik massaged her brow with thumb and forefinger as though withdrawing reminiscences by hand.

“The monsoon was just beginning when Frog the Outer came. She was soggy. Frightened. Furious. I guarded the paths then, as I do now. I could have allowed her to run into the light. Instead, I quenched the lantern. Allowed her to pass. A great, fat man, a village Headman, came snorting and pawing behind her. When the lantern killed him and he fell, Frog put her face in my skirts and shook. At first, I thought she was crying because the fat man was her father.” Kirrik smoothed those skirts, seeming to see Frog still crouched there. “But she was laughing.”

“Why did you save her? And why did the Master agree to keep her?”

“Once, the Master had a son. Taught him to hate. Hate is safety, for sorcerers and their sons. It was too much hate, in the end, and the son was driven away. But Frog reminded me of the Master’s son. Her gift is hate. Even those without magical gifts may have mundane ones. The Master knew from his future-searchings Frog would lead him to something he needed. Something he had been searching for.”

“To what?” Unar was aghast. She didn’t understand the strange prohibition against affection shown first by Frog, now by Kirrik. She tried to think what Kirrik’s Master needed and had been searching for. The guess escaped her lips before she could stop it. “Bones.”

Stolen bones, Frog had called them. Stolen from where? From whom? Did the Old Gods need them, if they were to rise again? Did the Floorians act as custodians of the bones? Unar still did not know what a bone woman was.

“Hush,” Kirrik said.

For a moment, she seemed to be straining to hear some distant music.

Then she turned an odd, triumphant rictus on Unar. The ear bone that Unar had used before was in her outstretched hand.

“Take this, now, Nameless. The danger we have been waiting for is here at last. Oh, and there is something else. You must wear this.” She dug in a damp, black pouch at her waist, drawing out a strip of colour-shifting fabric Unar recognised at once. “Chimera skin. While you wear the blindfold, you will not be able to magically perceive the patterns I will make of your power. You will breathe out into the bone flute. You will supply me with raw sound. Whenever I command you to spin, you will draw it like a spider drawing silk, but I will be the weaver.”

“You want me to fight blindly?”

“I will do the fighting. Are you afraid, Nameless?”

Unar’s heart thudded. “Of course I am, Core Kirrik. You intend me to be. You won’t tell me what is coming.”

“Put the blindfold on.”

Unar obeyed. The chimera skin was light and supple. It didn’t hold water. It had no smell.

“Tighter,” Kirrik said, pulling the knot painfully. Unar felt the wind of the abandoned umbrella falling, just as Frog’s voice came shrilly from the direction of the dovecote.

“Marram! Stop!”

Something crashed into the building, making the branch beneath Unar shake.

He isn’t dead, Unar thought, dazed and indecisive. The ear bone was smooth and cold in her hands. Kirrik’s icy fingers sent a shiver down the back of her neck. Unar was bodily turned until she, too, faced the dovecote.

“You will play when I squeeze my hand, Nameless,” Kirrik said, low and cutting.

I must pass the test. I must stay with Frog. I must learn how to break through the barrier from this side.

Yet she couldn’t let Kirrik kill Marram.





FORTY-SIX

“WHO ARE you, to come into my place without seeking guest-right?”

Kirrik’s voice half deafened Unar. She flinched away but not too far, mincing steps where it seemed the other woman had stepped, not wanting to step off the edge of the path and break with the umbrella on the forest floor.

Marram’s voice, when it came, sounded weary. It floated down from a height, as though he stood on the flat roof of the cylindrical dovecote.

“The child you shelter, called Frog, is some sort of sorceress or Floorian bone woman. That Gardener you keep a prisoner was under my protection. I will have her back before I go.”

“Will you? Where will you go, and how? It is the monsoon. You are at death’s door yourself. What safe refuge will you take her to?”

Unar had no choice but to surreptitiously push up one edge of the blindfold so that she could see. She bit her tongue, hard, to keep from crying out. In the cold blue light of the death-lanterns, she saw dark, bruised stripes across Marram’s face, neck, and chest. He stood, swaying, close to the edge of the roof, wearing a bone amulet she hadn’t noticed him wearing before.

One of his arms was knotted with vines in a way that suggested his collarbone was broken. But the worst was the front of his left leg; some kind of creature had eaten away the flesh from knee to ankle, so that the shinbone where the spines were grafted was exposed to the air.

Unar let the blindfold drop. Everything was black, but she could still imagine Marram there, a living corpse. Only the magic that maintained his grafted spines could be keeping him on his feet.

“Marram, I’m safe here,” Unar called. “Please, go back.”

Kirrik spun to face her.